Text: 1 Cor. 13: 11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

It has been too long now to remember, but I am sure that when we were kids there were many times when we resented how we perceived that our parents didn't seem to be appreciating the fact that we weren't babies anymore. We felt that we were not being given the credit for being who we were at the time but rather were being treated as we used to be.

I don't remember getting hung up on that, but I do have a faint memory of from time to time feeling that I was not getting credit for the progress I had made. Now that I am a parent of four and a grandparent of eight, I can appreciate the dilemma from a parent's perspective.

We remember when they were little children, and sometimes when the kids seem to be drifting into what we know from experience are going to be rough times, we wish we could have them as little children again and be able to protect them. When I see a mother with a group of little people around her, I tell her to enjoy it because times will surely change!

But I don't want us to think backward but to think of where we are now. We are not six or sixteen anymore. We may be 26 or 66; but the question that I would like for us to think about is are we still acting as if we were six or sixteen? Now, I am not putting down people who are six or sixteen, but life is about being six for one year and sixteen for another year but not every year! Life is about growth and development. A body of water that doesn't flow on can become stagnant and even begin to stink.

It is strange, though, how sometimes we want to throw our weight around and claim the prerogatives of our age and experience; but then when it seems convenient, we want all the breaks and try to revert back to the time when people had to cater to us and we were given special treatment. The text for today is telling us that manhood has enjoyed its boyhood, but that its boyhood is in the past and it is time to get on with the manhood.

Manhood is special. It is about being responsible, about being a protector, about being under the rule of God. Manhood is for men, not boys; and we can be the kind of men that God means for us to be if we will put our childish past behind us.